(Yesterday I went to write this review and one of my cats sat on my hand, so I didn’t write anything. Today that cat is sleeping on the floor downstairs, so I have no excuse unless I spill my iced coffee on the keyboard or something.)

It took me more than one try to get into this book. More than two. Maybe even three or four. I order epubs on my kobo by size and then pick the largest file I haven’t read. Or, the smallest. I kept hitting Acid West as largest (it has some pictures), read a sentence or two, and then go pick the smallest epub I hadn’t read instead.

All that was a shame because when I sat myself down, not almost already asleep with a drifting mind, and said That’s it. I’m going to do this and started reading, I completely fell in Wheeler’s essays of New Mexico, of cows blanched by nuclear bombs, of space ports built by millionaires, of low hung houses and ranches, all of it. But the tales did require concentration. View them as an antidote to internet listicles and mindless candy crush games, a mental cleanser for an afternoon such as the ones I have here, a continent away from New Mexico, full of snow rather than sand.

Acid West by Joshua Wheeler went on sale April 17, 2018.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

(I am so far behind in reviews. I have so many to do and, as the three readers of my blog have noticed, I stopped doing anything about that months ago and *sigh*. Then, instead of writing the reviews, I just go straight to my dealer, i.e. Netgalley, and request more books and then the publishers on Netgalley give them to me. Why have you not cut me off, Netgalley? Plus I buy books and go to the library and I am totally going to die by being crushed by the huge piles of unread books I have all around my house. And, of course, the books from Netgalley expire, so then I take them out of the library and review them because I can’t let some multinational publishing conglomerate down. Plus the new WordPress editing system annoys me because I hate change. If I were a true reviewer, I’d make a plan to review at least 52 books this year, or something. But no, I’ll just go to the bookstore, then the library, then Netgalley and add to my unread pile so that, when crushed, it will take an excavator to dig my mummified corpse free.)

I decided, before opening the book, that I was going to dislike One day we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter by Scaachi Koul. I based this on the following reasons:

1. she is younger than me;
2. she is more successful than me; and
3. I read a similar book a few years ago and found the narrator insufferable and idiotic;

Then I opened Koul’s book and was annoyed with myself because it was good and amusing at times and heart-rending at others and dammit why are people more talented than me? How is that fair? And I shouldn’t prejudge books. I learned my lesson (although I reserve the right to prejudge any books with side-boobs on the cover).

Essays on being female, being Canadian, being first-generation, having boyfriends, having friends, people who are jerks, etc. Depth but not smothering (like how my piles of books are going to smother me if they don’t shatter all my bones first). I enjoyed reading it.

One day we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter by Scaachi Koul went on sale March 7, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Ooh, it made me heart sad, The Exploded View. It’s overwhelmingly beautiful, but absolutely sad (exception of first story about a Nice Guy™, which almost every woman in the world knows means he’s really a creep, although I guess while it fails the beautiful moniker, it’s still sad, since I’m sure if you asked creepy dude, he’d say he’s in love, not creepy at all.) And beautiful is wrong too — it isn’t vistas and sunsets, but beautiful in some other, intangible way that writing sometimes is when it’s describing sadness and potential and how we fail each other. The stories are all loosely tied together via a housing estate in South Africa (and by loose, I mean loose. Sometimes the tie is that the housing estate is off in the distance). And it ends with the looming threat of death, and the stories hang over you like that, days (months — I am so far behind in reviews) later. Death is overhanging me.

The Exploded View by Ivan Vladislavić went on sale March 28, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

It must be pleasant to have the world be all about you. In two ways, since All Our Wrongs Today, our protagonist Tom lives in a sort of utopia, which he manages, via time travel, to screw up with the result that what we have isn’t a technological utopia, but rather this, here, all around us. Yep, we had a 1960s future paradise, and then blammo! Trump (not explicitly but let’s throw him in there) and jerks and capitalism and poverty and auto-tuned pop songs all the time on the radio just because of Tom. Geez, Tom. What a schlub.

But, don’t fear. Even though our Tom is a schlub, he gets to have sex. Lots of sex. And he has a bunch of ex-girlfriends who he totally isn’t going to mention by name, but then again, here’s a list, and he probably also had sex with them too. Because it’s super super super super super important for this female reader to know that even though Tom is a self-admitted loser, he pulls man, he pulllllllls.

Side-boob anyone?

So we have an entertaining, sci-fi romp that I actually enjoyed reading and I’m not talking about the story or the science or the science-fiction, but the fiction that schlubby, self-admitted losers should get to have multiple universes/realities where they get to have sex with hot chicks (also intelligent — we’re made sure to notice that not only are the bone-buddies hot, they’re smart too).

Oh! But Tom having sex is a plot point that starts the whole destruction of the universe fans will tell me.

Yeah, well, I’m sure Elan Mastai could have figured out something else. He developed multiple theories of time travel in All Our Wrongs Today, he’s clever enough not to have major plot points hinging on some guy’s dick.

Good book, ruined for me because I’m not a heterosexual male who is titillated by good guys getting to have lots of sex.

All Our Wrongs Today by Elan Mastai went on sale February 7, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Can I just write sideboob and leave it at that.

Perhaps in an apocalyptic-everything-going-to-shit scenario woman just don’t have time to put on bras? And also have to be drawn at such an angle that we can all see the lack of bra?

Luckily there is still time to get all your clothing perfectly tailored and your hair done.

And either all women in this universe have gotten exact-same-shaped boobs through state-sponsored surgery or there’s a factory somewhere pumping out one-off form fitting tactical gear for each person.

Plus your boobs look amazing, and somehow they also grow bigger, if you look down at them from above.

Sigh.

If you can hold your gag reflex back to get past the extraordinarily sexist drawing of the characters, the story isn’t bad — an ultra-violence, nano-technology, X-men-esque shoot-em-up. But really, if I hadn’t had to review this, I would have tossed this aside around no-bra-levitation-tits on page 18 and called it a day.

Failsafe by F. J. DeSanto went on sale June 26, 2018.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

It’s a listicle of a book: little bits of somewhat scientifically studied wisdom on how to be happier.

Could I tell you any one of the suggestions at this specific point in time after reading it? No.

Was there a detailed bibliography of the studies and articles that Palmer took these happiness tips from at the end? Yes. Does well documenting your sources make me happy? Yes. So one happiness hack at least succeeded, with regards to me.

Happiness Hacks by Alex Palmer went on sale May 15, 2018.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I am always jealous when (Canadian) people win prizes for short stories, especially prizes to which I *may* have submitted. Sigh. I can’t even rightly be jealous because it isn’t like the stories in Faithful are bad. They are competent. Okay, they are more than competent. I can’t say that any of them will suddenly become my favourite short story in the world (Shout out to Guests of the Nation), and a few of the stories needed a bit more oomph (An Old Friend ends so quickly and not being a middle-aged, cheating man, I had trouble connecting with some of the motivations of Jake in the titular Faithful), but there’s a story about someone who realizes they’re never going to write a novel (Witness). I know that feeling (although I have written a novel); I know that feeling like I know my own skin.

Faithful are short stories that make me yearn to write short stories again.
Now if only I could come up with an idea (or maybe I’ll steal some of Karasik’s and make them my own; who knows).

Faithful by Daniel Karasik went on sale October 1, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I’m not a millennial — I think I’m Gen Y, maybe late Gen X (I remember Kurt Cobain dying), so these flow charts probably aren’t for me (also because I have already learned the IDGAF-answer to the question to whether or not to wear a bra, which is hell no), but because I am old and crochety now, I am going to say, if you’re going to make flow charts, put some damn arrows in, or make levels so that I know which box is next.

It’s kind of amusing, but I don’t really know it’s purpose. I guess you’d buy it as a cheer-me-up gift, or a cheer-you-up gift for a girl-friend? Maybe it’s an aspirational book to put ass-backwards on your bookshelf? Who knows. As I said, I’m old and crochety and need arrows in my flow charts otherwise I can’t be bothered.

The Best Damn Answers to Life’s Hardest Questions by Tess Koman went on sale September 4, 2018.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A pair of two Japanese novellas about, well, I guess about not being engaged in life, and having spiraled inwards, even when making connections to others. The first, a just-met pair stay at a love hotel for five days, then separate. The second, a wife lays in bed in her mouldy apartment, reading blogs online and thinking about her husband. The first novella takes place during Bush II years and it was like “Oh yeah, Bush. Lot’s of bad stuff happened then.” I’d forgotten about all that in the waves and waves of all the new bad stuff that’s happened in the meantime. The second is more unmoored in time, even within the story which sort of floats around the way my thoughts float around when I, too, can’t be bothered to put the effort in to get out of bed. Or like now, when it’s humid and I’m sleepy and I feel as detached from life as the characters I read about in The End of the Moment We Had.

It’s a very disorienting feeling after having read these stories; I’ve disassociated myself from all I suppose.

The End of the Moment We Had by Toshiki Okada went on sale September 4, 2018.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Oh my. There is a lot packed into this little book. I mean a lot. Two books, three books, worth of interactions and plots and conversations and reasons and fiction-thingies that make books books and not real life. We have a brother with anger issues. We have immigrant parents. We have random violence unrelated to the brother with anger issues. We have high school friends staying friends forever (which I guess happens. I still talk to, at best we’ll say 0.75 of a person of my high school friends, but I suppose there are other people who stay close to those they knew as teenagers. Me: I prefer to remove all reminders of adolescence, including, but not limited to, people, places, and things). We have weddings. We have break-ups. We have stalker-ish, suicidal sisters with power-of-attorney forms. We have a suitcase of a book with the zipper popping open and staying closed only with the help of a huge roll of duct tape.

Maybe all of everything in Be Ready for the Lightning happened somewhere to someone, because it has that feeling of truth being stranger/more fantastical than fiction. At a micro-level, each of the bits works, but Be Ready for the Lightning often feels like too much of a good thing. A black hole collapsing in on itself. I feel weighed down after reading.

Be Ready for the Lightning by Grace O’Connell went on sale June 6, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.